The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
Strangers have observed with surprise the quietness which reigns within
the city limits on the Sabbath day. The streets have a cleaner, fresher
look, and with the exception of the Bowery and Chatham street, are
closed to trade. The wharves are hushed and still, and the river and
bay lie calm and subdued in the light of the Sabbath sun. Everybody
seems trying to look as neat and as clean as possible. The cars run on
Sunday, as in the week. This is necessary in so large a city, as
without them many persons would be unable to attend church, their
houses being miles away from their places of worship.
CHURCH GOING.
In the morning, the various churches are well filled, for New Yorkers
consider it a matter of principle to attend morning service. The
streets are filled with persons hastening to church, the cars are
crowded, and handsome carriages dash by, conveying their wealthy owners
to their only hour of prayer.
The churches are nearly all above Bleecker street. Trinity, St. Paul's,
the old Dutch Church in Fulton street, and a few seamen's bethels along
the river, are the only places of worship left to the dwellers in the
lower part of the city, who are chiefly the poor and needy. Little or
no care is taken of this part of the population, and yet it would seem
good missionary ground. Trinity tries hard to draw them into its fold,
but no one else seems to care for them.
The up-town churches are well filled in the morning. The music, the
fame of the preacher, the rank of the church in the fashionable world,
all these things help to swell the congregation. They are generally
magnificent edifices, erected with great taste, and at a great cost.
They crowd into fashionable neighborhoods, being often located so close
to each other that the music of one will disturb the prayers of the
congregation of the other. The plea for this is that the old down town
locations were out of the way for the majority of the congregations.
Many of the new sites, however, are quite as hard to reach. The pews
rent for sums far beyond the purses of persons of moderate means, so
that the majority of New Yorkers are compelled to roam about, from
church to church, in order to hear the gospel at all. At the majority
of the churches, strangers are welcome, and are received with courtesy,
but at others they are treated with the utmost rudeness if they happen
to get into some upstart's pew, and are not unfrequently asked to give
up their seats.
There are intellectual giants in the New York pulpit, but they are very
few. The majority of the clergy are men of little intellect, and less
oratorical power. They are popular, though, with their own cures, and
the most of them are well provided for. They doubtless understand how
to
"Preach to please the sinners,
And fill the vacant pews."
SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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